"He's clever," laughed Phillips. "I'd enjoy the fight, if I'd only myself to think of, and life wasn't so short."

The laugh died away and a shadow fell upon his face.

"If I could get a few of the big landlords to come in on my side," he continued, "it would make all the difference in the world. They're sensible men, some of them; and the whole thing could be carried out without injury to any legitimate interest. I could make them see that, if I could only get them quietly into a corner."

"But they're frightened of me," he added, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, "and I don't seem to know how to tackle them."

Those drawing-rooms? Might not something of the sort be possible? Not, perhaps, the sumptuous salon of her imagination, thronged with the fair and famous, suitably attired. Something, perhaps, more homely, more immediately attainable. Some of the women dressed, perhaps, a little dowdily; not all of them young and beautiful. The men wise, perhaps, rather than persistently witty; a few of them prosy, maybe a trifle ponderous; but solid and influential. Mrs. Denton's great empty house in Gower Street? A central situation and near to the tube. Lords and ladies had once ruffled there; trod a measure on its s.p.a.cious floors; filled its echoing stone hall with their greetings and their partings.

The gaping sconces, where their link-boys had extinguished their torches, still capped its grim iron railings.

Seated in the great, sombre library, Joan hazarded the suggestion. Mrs.

Denton might almost have been waiting for it. It would be quite easy. A little opening of long fastened windows; a lighting of chill grates; a little mending of moth-eaten curtains, a sweeping away of long-gathered dust and cobwebs.

Mrs. Denton knew just the right people. They might be induced to bring their sons and daughters--it might be their grandchildren, youth being there to welcome them. For Joan, of course, would play her part.

The lonely woman touched her lightly on the hand. There shot a pleading look from the old stern eyes.

"You will have to imagine yourself my daughter," she said. "You are taller, but the colouring was the same. You won't mind, will you?"

The right people did come: Mrs. Denton being a personage that a landed gentry, rendered jumpy by the perpetual explosion of new ideas under their very feet, and casting about eagerly for friends, could not afford to snub. A kindly, simple folk, quite intelligent, some of them, as Phillips had surmised. Mrs. Denton made no mystery of why she had invited them. Why should all questions be left to the politicians and the journalists? Why should not the people interested take a hand; meet and talk over these little matters with quiet voices and attentive ears, amid surroundings where the unwritten law would restrain ladies and gentlemen from addressing other ladies and gentlemen as blood-suckers or anarchists, as grinders of the faces of the poor or as oily-tongued rogues; arguments not really conducive to mutual understanding and the bridging over of differences. The latest Russian dancer, the last new musical revue, the marvellous things that can happen at golf, the curious hands that one picks up at bridge, the eternal fox, the sacred bird!

Excellent material for nine-tenths of our conversation. But the remaining tenth? Would it be such excruciatingly bad form for us to be intelligent, occasionally; say, on one or two Fridays during the season?

Mrs. Denton wrapped it up tactfully; but that was her daring suggestion.

It took them aback at first. There were people who did this sort of thing. People of no cla.s.s, who called themselves names and took up things. But for people of social standing to talk about serious subjects--except, perhaps, in bed to one's wife! It sounded so un-English.

With the elders it was sense of duty that prevailed. That, at all events, was English. The country must be saved. To their sons and daughters it was the originality, the novelty that gradually appealed.

Mrs. Denton's Fridays became a new sensation. It came to be the chic and proper thing to appear at them in shades of mauve or purple. A pushing little woman in Hanover Street designed the "Denton" bodice, with hanging sleeves and square-cut neck. The younger men inclined towards a coat shaped to the waist with a roll collar.

Joan sighed. It looked as if the word had been pa.s.sed round to treat the whole thing as a joke. Mrs. Denton took a different view.

"Nothing better could have happened," she was of opinion. "It means that their hearts are in it."

The stone hall was still vibrating to the voices of the last departed guests. Joan was seated on a footstool before the fire in front of Mrs.

Denton's chair.

"It's the thing that gives me greatest hope," she continued. "The childishness of men and women. It means that the world is still young, still teachable."

"But they're so slow at their lessons," grumbled Joan. "One repeats it and repeats it; and then, when one feels that surely now at least one has drummed it into their heads, one finds they have forgotten all that one has ever said."

"Not always forgotten," answered Mrs. Denton; "mislaid, it may be, for the moment. An Indian student, the son of an old Rajah, called on me a little while ago. He was going back to organize a system of education among his people. 'My father heard you speak when you were over in India,' he told me. 'He has always been thinking about it.' Thirty years ago it must have been, that I undertook that mission to India. I had always looked back upon it as one of my many failures."

"But why leave it to his son," argued Joan. "Why couldn't the old man have set about it himself, instead of wasting thirty precious years?"

"I should have preferred it, myself," agreed Mrs. Denton. "I remember when I was a very little girl my mother longing for a tree upon the lawn underneath which she could sit. I found an acorn and planted it just in the right spot. I thought I would surprise her. I happened to be in the neighbourhood last summer, and I walked over. There was such a nice old lady sitting under it, knitting stockings. So you see it wasn't wasted."

"I wouldn't mind the waiting," answered Joan, "if it were not for the sorrow and the suffering that I see all round me. I want to get rid of it right away, now. I could be patient for myself, but not for others."

The little old lady straightened herself. There came a hardening of the thin, firm mouth.

"And those that have gone before?" she demanded. "Those that have won the ground from where we are fighting. Had they no need of patience? Was the cry never wrung from their lips: 'How long, oh Lord, how long?' Is it for us to lay aside the sword that they bequeath us because we cannot hope any more than they to see the far-off victory? Fifty years I have fought, and what, a few years hence, will my closing eyes still see but the banners of the foe still waving, fresh armies pouring to his standard?"

She flung back her head and the grim mouth broke into a smile.

"But I've won," she said. "I'm dying further forward. I've helped advance the line."

She put out her hands and drew Joan to her.

"Let me think of you," she said, "as taking my place, pushing the outposts a little further on."

Joan did not meet Hilda again till the child had grown into a woman--practically speaking. She had always been years older than her age. It was at a reception given in the Foreign Office. Joan's dress had been trodden on and torn. She had struggled out of the crowd into an empty room, and was examining the damage somewhat ruefully, when she heard a voice behind her, proffering help. It was a hard, cold voice, that yet sounded familiar, and she turned.

There was no forgetting those deep, burning eyes, though the face had changed. The thin red lips still remained its one touch of colour; but the unhealthy whiteness of the skin had given place to a delicate pallor; and the features that had been indistinct had shaped themselves in fine, firm lines. It was a beautiful, arresting face, marred only by the sullen callousness of the dark, clouded eyes.

Joan was glad of the a.s.sistance. Hilda produced pins.

"I always come prepared to these scrimmages," she explained. "I've got some Hazeline in my bag. They haven't kicked you, have they?"

"No," laughed Joan. "At least, I don't think so."

"They do sometimes," answered Hilda, "if you happen to be in the way, near the feeding troughs. If they'd only put all the refreshments into one room, one could avoid it. But they will scatter them about so that one never knows for certain whether one is in the danger zone or not. I hate a mob."

"Why do you come?" asked Joan.

"Oh, I!" answered the girl. "I go everywhere where there's a chance of picking up a swell husband. They've got to come to these shows, they can't help themselves. One never knows what incident may give one one's opportunity."

Joan shot a glance. The girl was evidently serious.

"You think it would prove a useful alliance?" she suggested.

"It would help, undoubtedly," the girl answered. "I don't see any other way of getting hold of them."

Joan seated herself on one of the chairs ranged round the walls, and drew the girl down beside her. Through the closed door, the mingled voices of the Foreign Secretary's guests sounded curiously like the buzzing of flies.

"It's quite easy," said Joan, "with your beauty. Especially if you're not going to be particular. But isn't there danger of your devotion to your father leading you too far? A marriage founded on a lie--no matter for what purpose!--mustn't it degrade a woman--smirch her soul for all time? We have a right to give up the things that belong to ourselves, but not the things that belong to G.o.d: our truth, our sincerity, our cleanliness of mind and body; the things that He may one day want of us.

It led you into evil once before. Don't think I'm judging you. I was no better than you. I argued just as you must have done. Something stopped me just in time. That was the only difference between us."

The girl turned her dark eyes full upon Joan. "What did stop you?" she demanded.

"Does it matter what we call it?" answered Joan. "It was a voice."

"It told me to do it," answered the girl.

"Did no other voice speak to you?" asked Joan.

"Yes," answered the girl. "The voice of weakness."

There came a fierce anger into the dark eyes. "Why did you listen to it?" she demanded. "All would have been easy if you hadn't."